48 Director's Annual Report. 
that it was not the proper season for securing birds, saying that it 
would be useless to make the severe climb up the mountain to 
where the birds’ nests were. Some weeks later, they assured me, 
Uau would be much more plentiful. As it is impossible to find 
the birds’ burrows without specially trained dogs, which only the 
natives have, I was forced to give up the project for the time being. 
My next meeting with the Uau wason Mayg. Iwasona 
two day camping trip on the Kaunuohua trail, which leads down 
the pali into Pelekunu valley. The object of the trip was to spend 
a late evening and early morning in that locality, in the hope of 
hearing the call, and, if possible, secure specimens of the Oo, since 
the bird, in former times, frequented that section. On the way 
down, at about a 3500 foot level, I found the bill, wings, feet and 
some loose feathers of an Uau that had been killed and eaten by 
some animal, presumably a mongoose, not more than the day be- 
fore. ‘That night I went into camp beside the trail in a drenching 
rain. ‘The camp was not an elaborate affair, simply a few ieie 
vines and ferns piled on a narrow shelf on the pali, the ledge being 
scarcely wide enough to lie on. ‘The face of the pali was almost 
perpendicular for hundreds of feet above and below me. In fact, 
it was so steep that it was necessary, as a precaution, to drive 
stakes along the lower side of my bed to prevent the possibility of 
its slipping off the edge and my rolling off during the night. 
Shortly after dark I began to hear the strange, weird cry of 
these petrels, as they sailed about the cliffs, evidently attracted by, 
and much exercised over, my campfire. All night long—long 
after the fires had died out—they could be heard calling here and 
there about my ‘‘swallow nest’? camp. A long drawn out U-a-u, 
suggesting the wail of a lonesome cat, would be answered by 
Uau—ka-—ka-ka-ka-ka, a note just petrel enough to be recognized 
as such, yet combining such a number of other suggestive sounds, 
as to render it both indescribable and unforgetable. Though they 
frequently flew close to me, there was so much heavy fog that it 
was useless to shoot in the dark, besides it would have been almost 
impossible to have secured a bird from the precipice below me if 
it had been killed by achance shot. ‘The experiences of the night, 
however, were enough to assure me that the petrels were about in 
sufficient numbers to warrant an effort to secure specimens, when 
I could manage the undertaking. 
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